Are school dress codes good for students?

Are school uniforms the magic bullet for improved learning environments? Join Caroline and Cristen as they explore school dress codes, Title IX and the nature of gender identity within school dress code restrictions.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House top
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we are talking about
school dress codes and uniforms and whether or not they
have a positive impact on student life and learning. And

(00:27):
a lot of public schools have been looking into this
dress code issue because while for private schools, dress codes
and uniforms are pretty common, but it's a newer thing
for public schools to enforce dress codes more strictly, something
we really have seen since little mid to late nineties. Yeah,

(00:49):
I I was a dress code kid. I went to
a private school from second grade to twelfth grade. Was
always in some sort of dress code. The tucking in
of the shirts, the wearing of collars and such. Did
you have a fingertip links or oh yeah, oh fingertip link.
Absolutely your Your shorts and skirts had to be at
fingertip length or longer. And that meant that my mother

(01:11):
put me in some really embarrassing pleated shorts in middle school.
They just made you look proper also bunchie around the
waist well, as you can imagine. In home school, we
had very strict pajamas all the time, very strict dress codes. No,
we didn't have any dress codes. But in high school

(01:35):
I went to a private high school and there were
some funny changes that came about with a dress code
while I was still there. Um, when I started as
a freshman, they have the typical stuff of the fingertip
length rule, no spaghetti strap tank tops, stuff like that,
no excessive logos. But then flip flops became really popular.

(02:01):
It's like those plastic flip flops couldn't do that. You
could get at Old Navy in a rainbow of colors
for like three bucks to pop, and since we're in
the South, this was great. You could basically wear them
year around and you could accessorize with them. Huh. Well,
my sophomore or junior year, they enforced a no quote
unquote shower shoes rule. The one time, Caroline that I

(02:25):
got sent to the principal's office, you bad kid in
high school was for my flip flops. I was in
a p Latin and my teacher looks down notices my
perfectly accessorized, cheap flip flops and said to me Kristin. Oh,
actually she said Paulina because that was my name in

(02:48):
guys Mine was Clara, and she sent me to the
principal's office and we had to have a discussion about
quote unquote shower shoes. How you were tearing this sciety apart. Well,
his whole argument was that it reflected poorly on our
school when visitors came along, Essentially that I didn't look
wealthy enough in my latrine footwear. So that was that. Yeah,

(03:17):
I don't I got some demerits in high school because
I would try to sneak around not wearing a collared
shirt with pants. You know, you could wear an uncollared
shirt with skirts, that was fine, but if you're wearing
pants or shorts, you had to have a collar. So
I got some demerits for like I would try I
had longer hair and I would try to like cover
it over my collar. I don't know why I fought
that battle. That was not a battle worth fighting. Well,

(03:39):
I feel like in high school, especially and in middle school,
dresscoes were just asking for kids to start exercising their
earlier speech man, Yeah, for them to to get rebellious.
So let's talk about some dress code issues that have
come up and how schools have dealt with them, and
also how kids have pushed back not only for lax

(04:03):
or dress codes, but in some cases for more stringent
dress codes, as we will discuss. Yeah. One protest Kristen
that gained a lot of exposure get it dress code
pun Yeah, was at New York's stoy Vessant High School. Uh.
This was in The protest was called slutty Wednesday. They

(04:25):
were protesting the dress code that was adopted in fall
to combat clothing styles that the administration deemed unacceptable. Some
of those rules included that sayings and pictures on clothes
had to be in good taste. You couldn't have a
picture of like a beer mug on your shirt. U shorts, dresses,
and skirts have to extend at least beyond the fingertips,

(04:45):
and no shoulders, undergarments, middrifts, and lower backs could be exposed.
That sounds like that's not terrible, right, Yeah, that sounds
pretty standard. When I was reading that, at first, it
seemed like the kids were kind of getting up set
over nothing. But when you get into the details of
how the code was being enforced, it wasn't just a

(05:06):
thing of kids wanting to wear beer logo shirts to school,
but more of the fact that girls in particular were
being singled out, and not just you know, any girls,
it was certain girls with curb your body types. Um.
For instance, Jessica Valenti was wrote a post about this
for the Nation. She actually went to soy vest In

(05:27):
High school, and she quoted senior Lucinda Ventamiglia, who had
said that she'd been told that her skirts were technically
within the dress code, but they were too short for her,
and the school administrators told her that she was being
pulled aside for dress code for her own protection. That basically,

(05:48):
if she didn't follow the dress code and wear more
modest clothing, then she would be at risk of rape. Yeah,
so really really getting in that whole uh you're asking
for it thing early in life. A senior who helped
organize s Floody Wednesday, Benjamin Coates, said it's called slooty

(06:12):
Wednesday to symbolize that we're not actually slotty. I guess
these kids are just they're they're getting out there and
they're exercising their right too to protest. Yeah, because one
of the complaints too, was that the high school didn't
have the best air conditioning system, and New York summer
does get pretty hot, So they were arguing that it

(06:35):
was just it was hampering their learning environment because they
would be sweating all the time. Hey, I got in college.
I remember I got sent home from a class, not
me personally, but we all did because the air conditioning
was out. It was hot, it was like August. So
I don't know, maybe it can hamper learning that they're
really hot. Northern schools get snow days, Southern schools get

(06:57):
air conditioners broken days, as they should well, So how
does this connect to Title nine? Some of these articles
and an article covering it in the New York Times
and Valencia's article in the Nation talk about Title nine,
and they talk about the way in which these women
the curve your students who are dealing with administrators pulling
them aside. The way that these women are targeted or

(07:17):
called out could fall under disparate impact. So, under this theory,
a recipient violates get ready for some fancy language. A
recipient violates agency regulations by using a neutral procedure or
practice that has a disparate impact on protected individuals or
a disproportionate impact on the basis of sex. So the

(07:37):
argument is that these dress codes could be in violation
of title nine because it really has a much greater
impact on how girls have to dress compared to guys.
And that was something that I experienced in high school
as well. Guys had to wear collared shirts and slacks
or shorts, but there of course was no issue about

(07:58):
finger to blank through rule and just all of the
and shower shoes. Guys are getting caught with with their
accessorized flip flops and being sent through the principal's office. Um,
but on the flip side of the whole slutty Wednesday thing,
there's also been a movement started by high school freshman

(08:19):
Sage Hatch at her high school for more modesty. Yeah.
Sage Hatch comes from a long line of Hatches. She's
a cousin of Republican Senator or In Hatch from Utah,
and she's the daughter of Brent and Felicia Hatch, authors
of Raising a G Rated Family in an X Rated World.

(08:39):
Her brother, her older brother, actually started the No Cussing
Club at their school, and she decided she wanted to
hop on this train of changing things for the better
in her mind, so she starts a modesty club after
seeing her peers wearing revealing clothes, and part of uh
the website about her honesty Club says, are bright, heroic

(09:03):
women are being made the fool. And then she illustrates
her penchant for parallelism. She says, a fool to think
that to be loved, they must be naked. To be noticed,
they must be sexualized. To be admired, they must be objectified.
And in response to her campaign for this modesty Club,
the city of Pasadena, California, ended up issuing a proclamation

(09:24):
declaring December three through seventh Modesty Week, which also happens
to be my birthday week. Well there you go, Kristen.
Correlation or causation, You tell me, Caroline. Now the thing
about hatches modesty Week. While she did get a lot
of flak from students about this, as you can imagine,
it is not the coolest thing to say, Hey, fellow teenagers,

(09:48):
let's put on more clothes. No slutty Wednesday. Far more
appealing to to youth. And I say that as a
former youth, um, But I mean I get where she's
coming from. She she has good intentions in terms of
saying women we don't need to to be sexualized and
objectified and all of that, But framing it in terms

(10:11):
of a Modesty Week and it being adopted by the city.
And it goes back to this whole thing of putting
the onus on women exclusively to make sure that they
don't dress in such a way that it might distract
men or possibly put them in danger of being targets
of sexual assault, even though study after study, research after

(10:33):
research finds that the relationship between what you're wearing and
sexual assault is null and void. That does not make
a difference. So we can go ahead and bust that myth.
And when Hatch was asked about Guy's participation in Modesty Club,
she was like, well, you know, we want them to

(10:54):
respect women, but they don't really need to change how
they're dressing. Yeah, because they're boys. Yeah. There is a
lot of concerns placed just on how young women dress
as opposed to men. And going back to that story
Vessant High School protest the dress code issues, Valenti quoted
principle Stanley Titel, who said, many young ladies wear denim

(11:14):
skirts which are very tight and are short to begin with,
and when they sit down, they only rise up because
there's no worlds to go. The bottom line is some
things are a distraction, and we don't need to distract
students from what it is supposed to be going on here,
which is learning. And Valenti argues, hey, buddy, that's your problem.
It's not the responsibility of female students to mitigate the

(11:35):
male gaze. The real distraction, she says, is the shaming
and shameful way that this high school is treating women.
And so Riya Chimali over at the Huffington's Post on
February nineteenth of this year got into the fray, writing
about not only how like Christ and said the onus
is on young women, but also that LGBT kids are

(11:57):
facing the same issues. There are all these issues of
gender identity and how you dress at school and whether
that fits into this preset dress code. Yeah. The thing
that Shamali brings up that that is echoed over and
over and over again by school administrators who want to
enforce these stricter dress codes, is that whole distraction factor

(12:22):
of saying that if girls are dressed a certain way
or students addressed a certain way, showing too much skin,
being too provocative, then it's going to distract all of
these male students in particular, even though some of the
advocates on behalf of lax or dress codes for specifically

(12:45):
for girls, would say that, well, isn't it equally distracting
for girls to be like, not only concerned that what
they wear might be putting them at risk of something,
but that they are clearly and constantly being told that
they're the object x of you know, a sexual gaze,
that there's really no safe space for that. Yeah. And

(13:08):
then of course, you know, we get into the issue
of kids dressing against gender norms in school and how
big of a deal that is in high school. And
so everybody's saying, oh, it's so distracting, you know, if
you if you dress against your gender, if boys are
wearing wigs, all this stuff, and there are several reports
from the past couple of years of like actual safety

(13:28):
issues for some kids in high school. Yeah, I would
argue that these days, the gender identity stuff that comes
up with dress code enforcement is more crucial in a
way than the whole antiquated modesty argument um. For instance,
in two thousand nine, a Cobb County school which is

(13:49):
right near where are the land from which I hail? Yes,
Cob County School, send hime A male student who dressed
in women's clothes and wigs. I made national news. Actually,
in February two thousand eight, Lawrence King, who was an
eighth grader from oxnern California, who occasionally were high heeled
boots and makeup, was shot to death in class by

(14:09):
another student. And in August two thousand nine, a Mississippi
Students senior portrait was barred from her yearbook because she
had posed in a tuxedo. Initially, she went in and
you know, they put her in the traditional drape the
girls where, and she hated it so much. She even tried,
you know, to go through with it, you know, to
kind of tow that line. But then she's like, you

(14:31):
know what, No, I want to do it in the text.
Is this the student whose mom ended up buying a
full page out in the yearbook to put a picture
of her daughter in a tuxedo so that it would
still make it into the yearbook. Yes? Um, So these
kinds of uh factors are are coming up a lot, because, yeah,
it's true that dress has always been away four teams

(14:51):
to communicate their evolving identities, and these days we are
seeing more gender fluidity as part of that and you
could argue that they should be allowed to explore those things,
and it could be a good thing for that to
be allowed in schools as a way of normalizing that

(15:12):
kind of gender, broadening gender spectrum to the students around them,
you know, to possibly protect them from harassment over time. Yeah,
I definitely agree with Diane Aaron Steft. He's a psychologist
who was quoted in The New York Times in two
thousand nine. She says this is really an issue of
a generational divide. She says, this generation is really challenging

(15:33):
the gender norms we grew up with. For them, gender
is a creative playing field. She also goes on to
say that adults these days have become the gender police
through dress codes. Now it's not so much just about
making sure girls skirts hit their fingertips, but it's also
becoming a gender issue. Yeah, I mean. And the thing is,
I can I can sympathize to a point with school

(15:55):
administrators who are a trying to run a school that
is just not easy to begin with. But now you know,
when you talk about dress codes, you're having to take
into account factors like anti discrimination policies, mental health factors,
community standards, the whole classroom distraction thing, safety factors. I mean,
it's become this huge issue that is not just solved

(16:19):
with a fingertipling rule or a no high heels for
boys rule. Um, because you also have people like ka Himnitz,
who's a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute and also
the author of books such as The Plight of the
Alpha Female and Manning up how the rise of women
has turned men into boys, who has talked publicly about how,

(16:39):
you know, kids need to dress according to their traditional
gender roles in school because quote, it's hard enough to
get kids to concentrate on an algorithm even without Jimmy
sitting there in lipstick in fake eyelashes. So you could
line up her quote next to the principle who talked
about the denim skirt rising up, could you not? It's

(17:00):
the whole distraction thing. We don't want our kids distracting
other kids. And then there's also there is to the
question of safety, because dress codes are often enforced with
the idea that it would promote a safer learning environment.
But if those you know, those kids who might be

(17:22):
dressing outside the gender norm are called out so often
and and ostracized as a result of it. Aren't you
also endangering their safety at the same time. Yeah. Stephen Russell,
a University of Arizona professor, surveyed California high schoolers asking
why those students perceived as not as quote masculine or

(17:43):
feminine as others were harmful and the leading reason he
found that students gave was manner of dress. So maybe
kids are are absorbing those those messages that are being
sent through dress codes and um to, I mean, I
you see this doesn't Again, I don't want to oversimplify

(18:03):
this issue and just say like kids wear whatever they
want to school in any former fashion. Um. But I
think Diane Levin, who's a professor at wheel At College
in Boston who's looked into this, uh, makes a good
point when she says, don't just abandon the student. But
if it seems like the way a student is dressing
is problematic, you need to find out why are they

(18:25):
being sensations seeking? Can they keep the student? Can the
school keep a student safe in some way like kind
of figure out what's going on instead of just saying
go home, change your clothes. Yeah, and I think it's
worth noting I know we're talking about younger kids middle
school in high school, but I do think it's worth
noting that the University of Oxford in England, where I
have spent a summer, uh got rid of its rules

(18:47):
regarding gender specific academic clothing after concerns arose that the
policies were unfair to the transgender community. So previously, when
men and women went to formal occasions like exams, men
had to wear dark suits, socks, black shoes, white bow tie,
and plain white shirt under their gowns, whereas women had
to wear a dark skirt or trousers, white blouse, black stockings, shoes,

(19:09):
black ribbon in their hair, tied to bow. This this
it's very complicated. She is just to take a chest anyway.
As of August, men can choose to attend formal locations
and skirts and stockings and women in suits and white
bow ties. So if Oxford is adjusting, I mean I
think that signals kind of a sea change. But speaking

(19:31):
of Oxford and it's changing its uniform rules, maybe the
solution to all of this stuff, you know, to kind
of nip in the bud before it can even happen,
is to enforce uniforms for schools, because that would just
just strip the whole identity thing. You can jazz things

(19:52):
up in certain ways, obviously, put your own spin on
your frock, but maybe school uniform ms are the answer.
And this was something that was looked into on the
public school level in the United States in the late
nineteen nineties. President Clinton actually instructed the Federal Education Department

(20:13):
to distribute school uniform Policy Manuals to all U S
school districts in nine six, and there was a big
push after that for school uniforms in public schools, especially
following the Columbine shootings, in thinking that if you can
kind of eliminate these differences between these different groups of

(20:36):
kids at school and just make it everybody look the same,
we're gonna solve a lot of problems and everyone will
be safer, and everyone will be the most popular. Yeah,
it's just like a not a serf song. Yeah. Um, well,
I mean it doesn't entirely work out that way, and
we'll go into that here in a second. Um, but

(20:57):
no state so far has legislatively mandated school uniforms. I
think there might be an uprising. Do you think I
feel like people would be like not in my backyard. Well,
that's the thing in the United States. People, as soon
as you start talking about enforcing dress codes in public schools.
Private schools, you know, they can do what they want
pretty much, but with public schools, you're gonna have someone

(21:19):
at least raised the issue of First Amendment freedom of speech.
Although I will say that the courts have traditionally recognized
the unique needs of the school environment. But still it
would probably cost a lot of money, not to mention time,
if the state wanted to pass a blanket rule like
that for all public schools. Right. As for the effects

(21:42):
of uniforms, a lot of the stuff out there is
just anecdotal evidence, you know, like, uh, we put a
uniform rule in this school, and kids started paying more
attention or they started behaving better. A lot of information
out there is coming from conveniently enough uniform companies. Yeah,
company is that make those special plaid skirts um French toast,

(22:04):
which is you know, quote unquote official school where tells
us that there was a seven percent increase in public
school uniforms in the US, one hundred and fifty thousand
more kids wearing them. They say that uniforms create an
enhanced climate for learning, helping students to focus again, getting
rid of those daily distractions, that they boost school unity

(22:26):
and pride. Everybody looks the same, they're all wearing the
school color, so yeah, ra rao school. And they also
say that uniforms encourage self expression outside of your clothing,
so that you're forced to be like, I don't know,
more artistic personally instead of through your shirts or skirts,
I will exhibit my lively personality through my high scores

(22:51):
on science tests. Perfect. That's what everybody's going for it.
And they make arguments about safety and security that it
eliminates clothes used to intimidate or conceal contraband, and it
helps you easily identify outsiders, you know, if somebody's you know,
wearing jeans and that a sea of uniform pants. They
also argue that uniforms are cost effective, although French toasts

(23:14):
reasoning for this mostly falls in line with their own pricing.
They're like, it's cost effective. Meanwhile, why don't you go
over and look at our shirts that you can buy. Um,
there are a lot of questions of price because one
of the arguments of you know, don't institute a uniform
policy in my school, you know, or in my district
or whatever is can parents afford it? Is it actually

(23:38):
a financial availability to all families. And I think there's
this piece we read about UK public schools where the
author argues that if we made some changes, maybe it
could be available to all. Yeah, because in the UK,
uh it's standard for public school kids who wear uniforms.

(24:00):
And the author, Angela Walmsley, who was writing in a
fi Capain magazine in March two thousand eleven, talked about
how uniforms in the UK are very cost effective because
since all the schools require them, then that you know,
gets the market and motion to drive the prices down
a bit because you have to have competitive prices if

(24:21):
you want to move these uniforms off the shelf. And
she also talks about how you know the schools in
the UK because it is at every school they're not
pushing those special plaids. They're saying, you know you have
to wear like khaki pants, are black pants and a
white polo shirt. Well, you can buy a white polo
shirt in a lot of places. It's not like when
you're in the US, you know, or you know, for

(24:43):
my for instance, in my school, we didn't have uniforms.
We had a dress code, but towards the end of
my time in high school, a lot of the girls
that I went to school with, we're so fed up
with how strict and seemingly arbitrary at times our dress
code was that they started pushing for uniforms. But the
uniforms they went for were that special play, strangely not
in our school colors, but anyway, yeah, they actually were

(25:04):
very pricey. Yeah, I mean, and anecdotally, when I was
in high school, I would have totally been on board
with school uniforms, if only to eliminate the stress of
getting dressed every morning and going into a sartorially competitive environment,

(25:25):
because unlike being in a larger public school, where I'm
sure the same thing still happens, but I was in
a private school where I had a class of sixty
other kids, and if you weren't wearing, you know, a
snappy outfit, you did stand out and people did talk

(25:46):
about you. And because it was a pricey school, people
knew about labels, and I was not one of the
rich kids who could wear all the labels. So it
would have been awesome to have uniforms. Although I remember
talking about that with friends of mind at school, and
we realized that the whole label competition would simply trickle

(26:08):
down to where like you would have to wear amazing
expensive shoes or I have to get i don't know,
hair extensions or something. You know. We would always handbags.
Oh my god, people want crazy over handbags. Like there's
always going to be some kind of conspicuous consumption going
on whether you have uniforms or not. But still would

(26:29):
have made matching my outfits easier. Yeah, for sure, there's
less stress in the morning. And I'm sure. I mean
I I did have friends who went to schools with uniforms,
and I remember my mom talking to their moms, you know,
and and there was, yes, more, maybe more of a
cost upfront because you have to buy this many skirts
or trousers or shirts or whatever from the special uniform company.

(26:49):
But eventually it evens out because you're not buying fifty
different types of shirts so that your daughter can pick
from all of these things to where during the week
it's like, okay, well you have the uniform and then
you have weekend clothes in church clothes or whatever. Yeah,
it seems much simpler um. But the one thing though,
we haven't gone much into is whether or not, outside

(27:10):
of just a sense of well being and maybe saving
some time in the morning, whether uniforms and stricter dress
codes do have an impact, Because even though I think
that we would like to think in a way that
at least adults through an adult perspective, I can totally
see where it's coming from. Maybe for kids not so much,
but I think that we would like to think that

(27:32):
making everything look nicer at school will make kids learn
better and make the teaching environment easier and more manageable.
But over and over again, as you've mentioned, that research
is scarce in terms of any kind of statistically significant
results one way or the other. Yeah. Yeah, a lot

(27:55):
of these studies are just saying like, well, I mean,
some kids did better, some kids did worse. Uh. There
was a University of Houston study from that found there
was a slightly better impact for the female students at
the schools that they surveyed. They looked at a hundred
and sixties schools in a large urban district from all

(28:15):
the way to two thousand six, and the findings showed
bolstered attendance, academics, and behavior in middle and high school
students once their schools adopted uniforms, with the biggest improvement
among girls. Yeah, they found that the school district was
more likely to retain female students at all grade levels
once they started wearing the uniforms. But that doesn't take

(28:38):
into account whether or not different teaching methods were changed
other factors. There's so many variables that go into you know,
student retention, student learning that while uniforms might seem like
an easy fix for it, clearly from the mixed results
of all the studies we found, it's not some kind

(28:59):
of magic it right. And one former New Jersey school
board official, Matt Busing, wrote in The School Administrator back
in April, Listen, adopting uniforms is not a silver bullet
for problems in a school. Uniform policies or dress code
policies depending should be a part of a larger school
reform effort. So, Okay, you're gonna put your kids in

(29:20):
uniforms to make them feel safer or more you know,
proud of their school, but you also need to take
into account teaching methods, getting parents involved, you know, extracurriculars.
Like they're right, there are so many variables school uniforms
aren't just going to magically fix everything that's wrong with
your school or your district. Yeah, especially because the thinking

(29:42):
for a lot of public school districts in the United
States is that you enforce uniforms in the you know,
the poorest school districts, and you don't address any of
the community issues that are going on to where you
know that if the kids have no support order to
go like after school, like, no, you're not going to have,

(30:02):
you know, a healthy and happy learning environment just because
that child is dressed just like the other child sitting
next to him or her. Um. So, the question of
whether or not school dress codes and uniforms are good
for students, it seems like a toss up. It depends. Yeah,
it could be. I have a feeling that for high

(30:23):
school students who are listening and middle school students. I
know we have some middle schoolers out there who are
listening to this, the answer might be no, absolutely not,
or I don't know. Again, It's like some kids might
be more for a sloody Wednesday kind of thing, and
other kids might be like I was and wishing that
I could wear the exact same thing every day to
school to make life easier. Um. But for parents. Just

(30:45):
from reading comments on my articles about school dress codes,
it seems like there is you can track the age
of a person's child and how much they really, really
really want a dress code in force. The older those
kids get, the more parents are like, just get a
uniform on them already. My mom loved buying Ni clothes

(31:08):
to the point where I was like, Mom, I'm nineteen,
stop buying me. Oh. My mom was the opposite. Nance
is not a fan of shopping. But no, my mom
will walk by a store and she'll be like, oh
my gosh, look at those smock dresses. She doesn't talk
like that. I don't know, it's just in my head,
but yeah, no, my mom still wishes she could dress
me and not in uniforms. I'd like to see what

(31:31):
she would pull for you. Smock dresses, uh, Lily Pulitzer,
lots of pink. My my initials would be embroidered on everything. Yeah,
there was a lot of monogramming that went on at
my at my high school. Okay, before I have a
panic attack thinking about my high school days, go ahead
and send us your thoughts. I'll be curious to hear

(31:53):
from students from teachers from parents out there on school
dress codes and uniforms. Does it help if your kid
does wear a uniform? Have you noticed a difference in
learning happiness all of that? Mom Step at Discovery dot
com is where you can send your letters. You can
also send a message on Facebook. And now, Kristen, let's

(32:14):
read some letters. Well, we've got a couple of letters
here in response to our Transgender one oh one episode,
and you've found some really positive feedback from that episode,
which makes me really happy. So I'm going to read
this letter, for instance, from Jojo. Just got done listening

(32:36):
to the podcast, and I just had to say that
I always appreciate when people bring up transgender issues and struggles.
I'm transgender myself and even learned a thing or two
today about myself and people like me in other countries.
For me personally, I don't mind if people ask me questions,
so long as they do so with respect that you'd
expect from anyone. Anyhow, keep up the good work, So

(32:57):
thank you, Jojo, and I I have a very similarly
positive email from Lisa uh. Lisa says, I want to
give you a pat on the back for a job
well done on your Transgender one on one podcast, Why
thank you. I'm patting myself on the back as we
speak as the founder of Transgender Education Network of Texas
and a long time trans advocate. When I see a

(33:19):
media outlet doing a piece on transgender issues, my first
reaction is to cringe. And it's a bit Most people,
well meaning as they are, typically get some things very wrong.
You guys got it right all right. Thank you for that.
Your piece was well researched, insightful, and respectful. When the
mainstream CIS world brings our issues to their audience, it

(33:40):
makes the world better for gender diverse people everywhere. In
our struggle. We have always said the education is the key.
The more people know us, the more they will treat
us with respect. Thank you for moving the ball forward,
no pun intended. So thank you, Lisa, and thanks to
everyone who's written into mom stuff at Discovery dot com.
And don't forget to head over to Facebook and like

(34:02):
us over there while you're at it, because we do
a lot of fun things on Facebook, such as our
Women's History Month project where Caroline and I dressed up
in costumes and posted some we hope entertaining pictures of
ourselves like female stereotypes and icons. So if you have
no idea what I'm talking about, that means you haven't

(34:23):
been to our Facebook page, so go over there before
you do anything else, But there is no microphone to
click in the corner of the page. You can also
follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast and on
Tumbler as well. We're at stuff Mom Never Told You
dot tumbler dot com, and as always, during the week,
you can make yourself smarter at our website, it's how

(34:43):
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, does it how stuff works dot com.